PORT ST. LUCIE, FL. Food workers at Alabon Haitian Restaurant 002 LLC on SW Bayshore Boulevard had no written policy requiring them to report symptoms of illness to management, state records from a September 15 inspection show, and there was no person in charge present or performing duties when inspectors arrived.
The restaurant was not emergency-closed.
What Inspectors Found
The September 15 inspection produced six high-severity violations and five intermediate ones, eleven citations in total. The six high-severity findings covered nearly every foundational layer of food safety: management oversight, worker illness disclosure, hand hygiene, surface sanitation, and customer notification about raw or undercooked items on the menu.
Inspectors also cited the facility for improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils that were not properly cleaned, sanitizing solutions that were not at correct concentrations or applied correctly, inadequate cold-holding equipment, and insufficient ventilation and lighting.
Three days later, on September 18, inspectors returned. That visit found one high-severity violation and three intermediate violations, a reduced count but not a clean bill of health.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and no active illness reporting is not a paperwork problem. Norovirus, the virus responsible for roughly 20 million foodborne illnesses in the United States each year, spreads directly from an infected food worker's hands to the food they prepare. Without a written policy requiring workers to report symptoms, and without a person in charge present to enforce any such policy, there is no mechanism to pull a sick employee off the line before customers are exposed.
Inadequate handwashing compounds that risk directly. Hands that are not properly washed after using the restroom, handling raw protein, or touching contaminated surfaces become the primary vehicle for transferring pathogens to ready-to-eat food. At Alabon, inspectors found both the policy failure and the practice failure on the same visit.
Food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned and sanitized add a second contamination pathway. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that carry bacterial residue from one food item to the next can transfer pathogens even when the food itself was safe at the start of preparation. The intermediate citation for improperly cleaned multi-use utensils, combined with the high-severity finding on food contact surfaces, indicates the problem was not isolated to one piece of equipment.
The citation for inadequate cold-holding equipment matters because temperature is the primary brake on bacterial growth. Equipment that cannot maintain food below 41 degrees Fahrenheit allows bacteria like Salmonella and Listeria to multiply to dangerous levels within hours. That violation, alongside improper sewage disposal and the absence of functioning management oversight, describes a facility where several independent safeguards failed at the same time.
The Longer Record
The September 15 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Alabon Haitian Restaurant has accumulated 246 violations across 37 inspections on record, a history that stretches back years and includes one prior emergency closure.
That closure came on September 6, 2019, when inspectors shut the restaurant down over flies. It reopened the following day.
The pattern in recent years is consistent. In September 2025, inspectors visited the restaurant three times in twelve days. The September 3 visit produced five high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. The September 10 visit produced five high-severity violations and one intermediate. The September 15, 2025 visit found one high and one intermediate, suggesting temporary correction rather than sustained improvement.
The February 2026 stretch followed the same arc. A February 19 inspection found five high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. Inspectors returned February 20 and found three high and three intermediate. A third visit on February 23 found two high and two intermediate. The numbers declined across consecutive visits each time, but the high-severity violations did not disappear, and the cycle repeated six months later.
Still Open
The six high-severity violations documented on September 15 did not result in an emergency closure order. State inspectors have the authority to close a facility immediately when conditions pose an imminent public health threat. On this visit, they did not exercise it.
The restaurant continued operating. Customers who ate there on September 15 or in the days that followed did so without any public notification that inspectors had cited the facility for having no illness reporting policy, no person in charge, and inadequate handwashing on the same afternoon.
The follow-up visit three days later found violations still present.
